NINETY YEARS.

Auckland Star, Volume LXVII, Issue 143, 18 June 1936, Page 9

NINETY YEARS.

MT. EDEN RESIDENT.

LIFE AT SEA

EILECTION THRILI* They live together at No. 20, Mount Eden Road, an old, old man and his old blind dog, and both are full of wisdom of different kinds. The old dog's eyes have been sightless since he was struck by a motor-cycle two years ago, yet, so vividly was his last vision of the house and its furniture printed on his mind that he can wander through it without a bump or a knock. His master's eyes

are hardly dimmed by 90 years of sun

and shadow, but his mind, too, like that of the old fox teirier, is a picture gallery of things that he will never see again—rumbling stage coaches and

I stately sailing ships and the sunlit 1 ports of the Spice Islands. Often he sits with closed eyes before the fire, with his blind dog at his feet, while his mind wanders "down the corridors of time." Snugged down at last in a quiet haven, after many far voyagings, Mr. Christopher Crouch sees his ninetieth birthday approiyh this week. He was born 011 June 20, 1846, at Hoddesdon, about 20 milejk from London, where his father kept tlfr Bull Inn. At his father's | inn the stage coach from London to I Liverpool used to change horses and Baby Christopher used to flatten his | little nose against the window pane to | watch with wide eyes those scenes that I Dickens used to love to describe —the | coach pulling up at the inn doors, [ the bustling ostlers, the heavily-cloaked coachman laying aside his long whip while he quaffed a flagon of mulled ale, such as no modern barman would know how to serve if he were asked for it, and the travellers streaming indoors demanding the hot spiced wines that made gout the common affliction of elderly Englishmen in those days. Bound For San Francisco. Inn-keeping did not, however, appeal to Mr. Crouch, and in 1863, at the age of 17, he sailed from London in the ship Berlin, bound for San Francisco. Thereafter he following the sea for many years. One of his ships was the Berhampore, which brought some of the early settlers to Wellington, where a suburb is now named after her. When Mr. Crouch was in her in 18GG, she was in the Calcutta trade, for which she had been built.

Having received a minor injury, on account of which the doctor advised him not to continue in the hard life of a seaman, Mr. Crouch shipped as a steward in the ship Abyssinia, bound from Liverpool to Sew York. Ir. rnidAtlantic they sighted the ship Richard Robinson, waterlogged and abandoned by her crew. Under the command of the third officer of the Abyssinia, a prize crew manned the derelict and shaped a course for Halifax, Nova Scotia.

J "The Richard Robinson was so deep i in the water that we could quite under - | stand her original crew thinking that . she was about to sink and taking to I 9 j the boats," stated Mr. Crouch. "We | kept with us one of the Abyssinia's boats, which we let tow astern. We j got a bad shock when, unnoticed in the darkness, the boat's painter chafed | through one night and we lost it. We then had to keep the waterlogged derelict afloat or sink with her. Fortunately for us, the weather was, for the North Atlantic, fairly good, and we brought our prize safely into Halifax. We all received a share of the prize money, but mine was the smallest, about £250, owing to the fact that, although I had done a seaman's work aboard the Richard Robinson, I had been signed on the Abyssinia as a steward." Ships and Shipmates. Like most sailors, Mr. Crouch left the eea with little more in worldly goods than what he sailed with on hi 3 first voyage, but rich in memories, to be recalled whenever, in a leisure moment, he thumbs over his collection of discharges. They themselves are worthy to be classed as historic documents, bearing as they do the names of ships and shipmasters now gone from the face of the waters. In the beautiful copper-plate caligraphv, they are typical of a less hurried age. Probably a dozen seamen could be signed off in the Auckland shipping office to-day in the time it took Captain James McMillan, of the Berhampore, to fill in one discharge and sign his name with its graceful flourishes. For 19 years after leaving the sea, Mr. Crouch was manager of the St. Rollox division of the Unionist Association in Glasgow, a Conservative political club. Thence he came to New Zealand 16 years ago, living first at Oamaru and later shifting to Auckland.

One of the things that STew Zealand has done to him, he confesses, is to change his political opinions. "For the first time in my life, I voted Labour last election," he said. "It seemed so strange I could hardly believe that I was doing it. That was one of the most notable experiences I have ever had." J